Free Republic

A fortnight ago I was contacted by a Ms. Amanda Robb, who identified herself as a journalist. Having had a personal history of difficulty with unsavory wretches of that sort, and being a well-known proponent of a harsh criminal punishment for their un-American collectivist scribblings, I of course immediately recommended that Ms. Robb engage in a vigorous act of self-procreation.Ms. Robb, however, would not be deterred. She (I did not ask her pronoun, regrettably, so I must assume) was earnestly seeking my comment regarding traditionalist superhero comic books and the manners and methods of aggregating funds for the production of...

Veteran journalist Lale Kemal, a columnist for the Zaman newspaper, at one time Turkey’s most highly circulated newspaper before the Turkish government’s unlawful takeover and closure of it in 2016, said at her last court hearing on Thursday, “I was put in prison without a single piece of evidence.”Kemal was arrested with former Zaman columnists Ali Bulaç, Ahmet Turan Alkan, Nuriye Akman, Mustafa Ünal and Şahin Alpay on July 30, 2017 after a controversial military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and released pending trial under judicial probation after months of pretrial detention. The journalist presented her last defence before...

A Washington think tank has warned that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is holding a number of Western nationals in jail to use them as “bargaining chips” against their countries in what they called “hostage diplomacy.”A 36-page report released on June 1 and titled “Erdogan’s Hostage Diplomacy – Western Nationals in Turkish Prisons” by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) said more than 30 Western nationals have been jailed in Turkey since a military coup attempt on July 15, 2016.At least nine of them remained in prison as of June 1, 2018, noted the report, co-authored by FDD fellows Eric...

Israel’s defense minister said Tuesday that a Palestinian journalist who was shot dead by Israeli troops on the Israel­-Gaza border was a Hamas operative, although the media production company he founded had recently been vetted for a U.S. government grant. Yaser Murtaja, the co-founder of Ain Media, was shot as he filmed protests at the border fence Friday. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that Murtaja, who used drones to film in the course of his work, was giving drone footage of Israeli positions to Hamas, was the equivalent of a captain in the group’s military wing and had been on...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s ruler for 15 years, has established himself as Turkey’s most consequential leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the republic’s founder. But while Ataturk’s legacy was to orient Turkey toward the West and lay a foundation upon which successors could cultivate democracy, religious tolerance and a reasonably free press, Erdogan seeks the opposite: He has placed Turkey firmly in the Islamic bloc and increasingly prefers Russia over NATO. He fans the flames of religious incitement not only against Jews and Christians, but also against Muslims who reject his more conservative views.It is time for the United States and...

ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Friday the case of two journalists held for more than a year over alleged ties to a failed coup would be decided by a local court, after the Constitutional Court ruled they be freed, a turnaround likely to deepen concerns for press freedom. snip Earlier on Friday Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the top court had overstepped its limit. “When ruling on individual applications, the Constitutional Court... cannot act like a super appeals court and cannot make rulings like such courts,” Bozdag wrote on Twitter.

Elizabeth Vargas is leaving ABC News. Vargas, who has spent the last 21 years at ABC, will depart in the spring, at the conclusion of the 40th season of 20/20. Vargas has co-hosted the prime time newsmagazine for the last 14 years.

James Rosen, a stalwart of Fox News Channel’s Washington D.C. bureau, is leaving the network, TVNewser has learned. “James Rosen is exiting the company at the end of the year,” a Fox News spokesperson confirms, without providing further detail. Rosen, 49, has been with Fox News since 1999, 3 years after the channel launched. As the network’s Chief Washington Correspondent, he often reported for Special Report, but was seen throughout FNC’s programming day, most recently just yesterday.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen had a plane to catch. The House of Representatives had already called last votes on Thursday afternoon, and the Republican Congresswoman from Miami was hustling to get home when an attendant in the Speaker’s Lobby stopped her. Jamie Dupree had asked for an interview. For him, Ros-Lehtinen could wait. “Jamie Dupree!” she called into the crowded hall. “Jamie Dupree!” Dupree, a 54-year-old radio reporter for the Cox Media Group, materialized out of the crowd of reporters and politicians and the two found a quiet corner of the bustling room underneath a glass chandelier. Dupree extended his microphone and...

The U.S. government historically rejects most asylum claims. Over a five-year period ending in September 2016, the U.S. received about 267,000 asylum claims and granted 46,000. It has granted asylum in recent years to a number of Mexican journalists. But Eduardo Beckett, Gutierrez's lawyer, accused the U.S. of turning a blind eye to corruption and violence in Mexico, and blamed the Trump administration for changing how it deals with asylum seekers. "There is no more humanity," Beckett said. "The new tactic is, we'll pressure you, we'll keep you detained, in hopes you'll give up."... After receiving what his advocates called...

It’s the contempt that’s so contemptible: President Trump’s contempt for the Constitution to which he swore an oath, for the F.B.I. that’s allegedly in “Tatters” (sic), for the majority of Americans (including his base) who will be worse off from a fat tax cut for the richest, for the shared wonder inspired by our public lands, for America’s allies, for the science that explains why it’s getting warmer, for due process, for truth, for informed debate, for the press, for the values anchored by liberty that the United States has attempted to represent to the world. That’s a lot of...

MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt seemed happy that Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul suffered six broken ribs and a buildup of excess fluid in his lungs when he was attacked earlier this month, before quickly apologizing for her on-air statement. “New details today on the incident that left Senator Rand Paul with six broken ribs – this might be one of my favorite stories,” the liberal reporter said last week. The MSNBC host quickly seemed to realize she was condoning violence and started to downplay her comments but appeared to lose her train of thought midsentence, saying, “Although, of course, we don’t…...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A report to the U.S. Congress released on Wednesday accused Chinese state media entities of involvement in spying and propaganda and said their staff in the United States should be required to register as foreign agents. The annual report of the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission said that while China had tightened restrictions on domestic and foreign media, Chinese state media had rapidly expanded overseas. The commission, created by Congress in 2000 to monitor national security implications of U.S.-China trade relations, said China’s state media expansion was part of a broader effort to exert greater...

Turkish government, under the rule of autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has issued detention warrants for 112 people over the links to the Journalists and Writers’ Foundation (JWF), which is defunct in Turkey, on Wednesday as part of its massive post-coup witch hunt campaign targeting alleged members of the Gülen movement.İstanbul-Anadolu Chief Prosecutor’s Office has ordered warrants against those who are executives of the JWF or who have relations with the foundation. The anti-terror police teams have started İstanbul-based operations to detain the JWF’s civil society activists and intellectuals in 17 provinces including İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Manisa provinces on Wednesday.It was...

One of Russia's top radio presenters has had surgery after being stabbed in the neck by a man who broke into her newsroom at broadcaster Ekho Moskvy. Tatyana Felgengauer is in a medically-induced coma in a Moscow hospital but her life is not said to be in danger. A male suspect is under arrest. His motive is not clear, though police say it appears to be a personal grudge.

A Wall Street Journal reporter has been sentenced by a Turkish court to 25 months in prison for publishing an article deemed to be terrorist propaganda by the increasingly authoritarian Turkish government. The sentence against Ayla Albayrak, a Journal reporter previously based in Istanbul, was in response to an Aug. 19, 2015, article Albayrak wrote entitled, “Urban Warfare Escalates in Turkey’s Kurdish-Majority Southeast.”

Is that the best you can do, Mr. President? Hours after the nation’s worst mass shooting in modern history, Donald Trump told the nation, correctly, that the slaughter was “an act of pure evil.” But then the president, who threatens to annihilate other nations, suggested, in the wake of 58 deaths and more than 500 wounded in Las Vegas, that there’s nothing to be done about mass murder on the home front by an American apparently unaffiliated with foreign terrorists. “In times such as these, I know we are searching for some kind of meaning in the chaos, some kind...

I wonder if we Donald Trump should qualify as the 20th or 21st century’s honest man. I suppose we could cheat a little and count him as both. I doubt it actually matters because - as Colonel Nathan Jessup explained -  most people can’t handle the truth.They hear only their own truth.And denounce anyone who doesn’t agree with it as a denier, liar or worse.So even when you find your century’s honest man, many will reject the truth. I guess we can’t fault them; when you’ve gone so long without hearing any truth, the real thing is hard to recognize,...

A couple weeks ago I came across an old article about Journolist which I found striking. In particular, I was struck by the ways in which some of the debates taking place among left-leaning journalists back in 2008 still seem to encompass the ways the left-wing media operates today. For those who don’t remember it, Journolist was just a listserv created by Ezra Klein. The list was invitation only and was mostly made up of progressive journalists. In theory, the list was a kind of digital water cooler where like-minded people could talk to others in the field. That may...

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